Chapter 220 – Harvester Plant

Savri - Day 4 - 117 Days Remain

We discovered the answer to the sabotage-or-entropy question about the elevator cable when we found remnants of crushed bones beneath what remained of the cabin.

I want to say this is the first time I have seen elevators being used this way, but that would be a lie.

The other time involved terrorists dumb enough to ride on an elevator they removed all the safety features from, hostages at the bottom of the shaft, a dressing down from high command, lots of clean-up, and closed-casket funerals.

In our defence, the official investigation concluded that the cable failure was caused by years of wear and tear rather than any special forces involvement. We were never there after all.

Anyway, after finding nothing more of interest there, we started to move towards the harvester plant, but Lilyth stopped us.

She conjured the [Scrying Mirror] again and wordlessly handed it over to me.

‘Fuck me…’ I muttered, seeing the giant tracked robot with two arms ending with four-fingered manipulator claws. One of them has a dried, dark stain on it.

Phosi motioned for the Mirror and a flicker of recognition passed through her face.

‘It’s a Naval Longshoreman Magitek Construct,’ she explained. ‘They were fairly common back in my time. NLMCs were versatile enough that other branches of the military adopted them with no modifications. Some private companies began buying them, but there was understandable resistance from the workers. You know, strikes, sabotage, even an assassination or two. Then the fall happened, and the issue was pretty much resolved in favour of the fleshbags.’

‘Never heard of those,’ I admitted.

‘I imagine most of the surface ones were scavenged for parts long before you were born.’

‘So we found a real ancient artefact,’ Aki marvelled.

‘And we are about to turn it into a pile of scrap,’ Lilyth curbed her enthusiasm.

‘W-why?’ Aki asked, sounding genuinely hurt.

‘We can't carry it out, so we will bury it here once we collapse this place. And frankly, I’ll rest easier if we dismantle the thing first. The last thing we need is someone digging this bot out.’

‘Oh.’

‘You think the NLMC could be a problem?’ Phosi asked.

‘Yes,’ the furball nodded. ‘So long as it is “intact”, it can be fixed and used against us. With it in pieces and buried… the likelihood decreases.’

‘That’s a good point,’ I had to agree. ‘Best to dispose of it. I am shocked you thought of this so quickly, though. Usually, civvies don't consider this stuff.’

‘Remember, back home I lived next to a country at war,’ Lilyth reminded me with a sour smile. ‘Disabling materiel you can't recover was a standard procedure. There was even a case of a fairly ancient IS-3 tank, think heavily armoured vehicle with a large cannon, that was used as a monument and in some town being captured, refurbished and sent to the frontlines, so I am not taking any chances with the large bot.’

I keep forgetting about Lilyth's background.

‘I guess you are right,’ utterly crestfallen Aki finally agreed.

‘Don’t worry, hon,’ Lilyth tried to reassure her. ‘One of these days we will find a cool ancient artefact that's portable.’

‘Not as cool as the construct though…’ she pouted.

‘You never know. If it is any consolation, I loved the idea of huge robots my entire life. So this decision brings me no pleasure.’

‘Could you zoom in on the stain?’ Phosi suddenly asked, interrupting us.

Lilyth furrowed her brows for a moment, but finally shrugged and said:

‘Sure. Give me a moment.’

‘Looks fresh,’ Caei remarked. ‘Few hours old at most.’

‘I guess we found our missing SOB,’ Lilyth sighed. ‘We can close the ticket.’

‘What?’ everyone but me asked.

The furball just waved their confusion away. It would be pointless to explain the crime against mortal beings that is the support ticket system to people who had never experienced having to spend thirty minutes on the phone trying to get to speak to a person only to be told that your incident would be marked as urgent despite that not meaning anything, like motherfucker I am just trying to get the service-approved music app installed on my wrist computer why is it taking five days.

‘How can this thing still be active?’ Deirdee asked. ‘Hasn’t it been five hundred years?’

‘It takes very long for mana crystals to lose their charge,’ Persephone explained. ‘If that thing had been charged shortly before whatever happened here happened, and it stayed mostly idle since… it could still have enough power for a few minutes of activity. I would be more surprised about it not failing mechanically, personally. Magitek items are durable, but not THAT durable. Especially not the very complex ones.’

To ensure there were no other surprises, Lilyth examined the floor very thoroughly. One thing Her Royal Furriness found near the construct was the source of the stain, a fairly fresh corpse of a man. The poor fuck appeared to have been cut in half by the construct’s claws, giving me flashbacks to the fate of Frank Ville, who suffered the exact same fate. At least poor fucker had me to comfort him in his final moments. This one… not so much.

Another bit that was concerning was that the ring of bones around the plant was not uniform. There was a very obvious hole in it, with some of the bones being removed and thrown onto the floor.

Sus.

Other than that, the floor appeared to be clear of life or other dangers, so we proceeded towards the harvester plant, and let me tell you it looked much spookier “in person” than it did on the screen.

The scary veggie was a two-metre-tall palm-like thingie with long and broad leaves. There were nubs of other branches at various points throughout its trunk, but the eerie fern probably didn't live long enough to fully grow them.

Or maybe those were supposed to be tentacles that got fossilised.

The worst part was… I felt watched. Maybe it was the giant pile of skeletons, but… that chill running down my spine rarely fired off without reason. Judging by how Lilyth flattened her ears, she must have felt it too. I could have sworn I heard her let out a brief, low, guttural growl, but it could have been my imagination.

‘I am very curious as to how the bodies got here,’ Deirdee remarked, breaking the grave-like silence. ‘I mean… plants aren't terribly well-known for their ability to carry stuff.’

‘Harvester plants are… different,’ Persephone retorted. ‘But yes… we would see some evidence of it being able to carry things. Like… wilted prehensile vines or something.’

‘Didn’t the guard mention seeing something move?’ I asked.

‘That’s a hole in that theory, yes.’

Lilyth leaned over the pile and began to examine it.

‘Huh… all of the skulls have holes in the back with a black trail of… something coming out of them,’ she said after a moment.

We looked at our resident “obscure ancient bullshit” expert, but Persephone just shook her head.

‘I have no idea,’ she said. ‘Could be that the thing just ate their brains.’

I shuddered at the thought. Becoming some glorified salad’s dinner struck me as a horrible way to go. Particularly if it involved your brain being sucked out through a fucking straw.

‘So happy this plant is dead,’ equally spooked Akster remarked.

Is it though?

‘It is not dead what can eternally lie,’ Lilyth, apparently having come to the same conclusion, intoned a quote I was very familiar with. ‘And with strange aeons even death may die.’

Aki responded by elbowing her in the side.

‘Not helping, sweetie,’ she chided her.

‘I know. That quote just felt… fitting.’

I had to agree. H. P. Lovecraft would probably get a raging hard-on seeing that plant.

‘I don't think the plant eating brains would cause people to block the door from the inside,’ Ren remarked, interrupting Lilyth and Aki. ‘There must be more to it. Mind control, maybe?’

Oh… fuck.

‘Fucking hell,’ Lilyth spat. ‘A bloody cordyceps.’

‘Kordi-what?’ Caei asked, and was rewarded with a story about a type of fungus that could turn ants into zombies.

‘W-would you l-look at the time,’ I said with a shaking voice after Lilyth was done. ‘It’s burn-this-fucking-thing o’clock.’

‘Yep!’ The rest agreed, but Persephone stopped us.

‘Just a moment,’ she said in an apologetic tone and pointed to the slightly “collapsed” part of the circle o’ bones. ‘Let me see if our recently bisected friend did something to it.’

The sorceress then levitated slightly off the ground and examined the plant more closely.

‘Lilyth, could you have your [Scrying Mirror] look at where I am pointing?’ she said softly, gesticulating at some point just beneath where the long leaves sprouted from.

It was an open seed pod that was partially ripped off the trunk, and all of its contents were missing. Judging by the fact that there were other pods next to it that were intact, this wasn't a natural occurrence.

‘Just the one,’ Lilyth confirmed upon doing a flyover with her [Remote Eye] and then gestured at Aki, who pointed her hands at the harvester plant and incinerated it with a [Jet of Hellfire].

An angry, pain-filled roar sounded in my mind, but soon went silent. Judging by the terrified expressions of my friends, they heard it too.

We initially planned to take the remains of the missing villager home for burial, but the plant being alive and him having touched it changed things. We would have to burn his body.

However, first we had to deal with the loading bot, and, Lady Luck finally smiling upon us, Persephone turned out to be right. The construct only had one arm operational, and its torso ring only allowed for a 45-degree rotation rather than the full 360, meaning that, since its fully mechanical tracks had stopped working a long time ago, Caei cutting off its arm with a [Floating Disk] rendered it harmless.

We briefly debated checking the body for the seeds, but, figuring out there was no way someone else could have accessed the place this quickly, we just burned it.

Afterwards, Lilyth “snuck up” behind the construct and planted three breaching charges on its back side. Just to be sure, we retreated to the staircase, and the furball set the breaching charges off with a snap of her fingers. We were rewarded with a sight of large holes appearing in the robot’s head, torso and platform. The plan was then for me to go in and finish the job with the wrist-mounted missiles, but the breaching charges must have set off the mana crystals, resulting in an explosion strong enough to shake the bunker.

Fuck!

When the shaking didn't stop, we decided we definitely outstayed our welcome, and it was high time to bolt. Lilyth, Ren and Persephone rushed towards the elevator shaft, while the rest of us began to scramble up the staircase. It was very touch and go, and I briefly worried we would have casualties when Aki got hit on the shoulder with a piece of concrete, but Caei helped her regain her balance, did a hit and run heal and resumed her escape. We barely made it outside before the whole place collapsed. Lilyth, despite having relied heavily on her magical powers to get out, fell to her knees and began coughing her lungs out.

Her flight was, honestly, impressive to watch from what Persephone, who flew, and Ren, who could climb on walls, told us. Unable to hide in our shadows, since we didn't cast any, and likely realising the stairs were a no-go for her, she went into her [Storm Form] and then [Jet Jumped] up the elevator shaft, bouncing from wall to wall. Still… that only carried her so far, and probably the raw panic didn't help any.

Note to self: Ask Persephone to teach Lilyth how to fly.

Still, we survived, and now that adrenaline began to leave my system, all the scrapes and scratches began to call for attention. My hip also decided to remind me that it existed, so I did something I really shouldn't do and cast [Soothe Pain] on it.

Luckily, I can fix any damage I do to myself.

‘Everybody okay?’ I asked the rest and received a series of panting confirmations.

Lilyth didn't answer, not that I would believe Queen “I can walk pulmonary oedema off” even if she did, so I went to check up on her, but other than her lungs, she was fine.

‘That could have gone better,’ Ren remarked.

‘At least… saves… us… the effort… of having… to collapse the… the place… ourselves,’ Lilyth panted.

We returned to the village a few hours later. Her Royal Furriness, ever compassionate towards her subjects, decided to deliver the bad news to Mahdar immediately, because “might as well get it over with. You can imagine our surprise when we found that Rohel was back safe and sound at home.

Whose corpse did we find in the bunker then?